


A spell of his own

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [176]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22943968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: "Don't you get bored to just turn a page, read a spell and learn it by heart? Don't you need something more challenging? Because I certainly do.”
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Leoverse [176]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	A spell of his own

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
> In this instance of the universe, Leo is a student at Hogwarts. He's in a relationship with his Defense Against Dark Arts teacher, Blaine, whose pupil, Adam, is also his best friend. Leo is one of the most brilliant students in the school and, as often happens with brilliant students, he does things he's not supposed to be able to do, so drama ensues.
> 
> written for: COW-T#10  
> prompt: The Magician

“Look at me, I believe in you,” Leo says, determination igniting his eyes. “You can do this!”

“Are you talking to yourself? In a mirror?”

Leo turns around to find Adam in all his blinding Gryffindor blondness standing at the center of the hall and looking resignedly at him. Even though you could just say that _resignedly_ looking at him is the only way Adam has ever rested his eyes upon Leo since they know each other, which is a very long time.

“First of all, this is not a mirror, it's a window, Adam. Are you losing your sight?” It seems really important to Leo to point that out since they are in the middle of a hall and a bathroom or a dormitory – the only two rooms where they could have found a real mirror – are several halls away from this one. It really makes him wonder if Adam is hiding his nearsightedness to avoid wearing glasses, safeguarding his perfect beauty. “Secondly, what are you doing here?”

“I was actually looking for you, but I see now it was a foolish thing to do,” Adam retorts. “I really don't know what's gotten into me.”

Leo ignores the remarks, as he always does. It's a bit of a specialty of him to only register what he likes to hear and let the rest dissolve into obliviousness. “And third,” he goes on with his monologue, “how did you get in here? This is Slytherin territory.”

“Actually, this is just a dungeon, one of the many. Your people's quarters are a little further down, and everybody knows that, by the way. It's not, like, the big secret you all think it is,” Adam explains. “The real question should be: why would anyone ever want to come willingly in this damp place anyway? And I must agree with you, I don't know. As I said, I made a choice earlier and I'm questioning it now.”

Leo decides he can let go of any other matter and goes back to the only answer Adam gave him that interests him. “You were looking for me?” He coos. “How cute! Were you missing me?”

“It's lunchtime and you weren't already seated at the table, waiting impatiently to stuff your face as you normally do, so I imagined you were somewhere you weren't supposed to, doing something regrettable,” Adam explains to him. “And for the records, I never ever miss you. Every second without you is a blessing which I cherish greatly.”

“Adam, your Gryffindor is showing,” Leo comments and he manages to sound both disgusted and proud. “If I didn't know you are basically the poster boy for your house and that you aim to be a Prefect someday, I would say you don't like me at all.”

“Today you wouldn't be that far from the truth,” Adam says. “So, are you coming to lunch or not?”

“Actually, I happen to have other plans for today.”

Leo links Adam's arm and leads him down one corridor and then another, infiltrating deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of halls that is Slytherins' favorite playground. Adam always muses that you can't expect much cheerfulness or even amity from people who like to dwell where mold does too. Leo's extremely outgoing nature and his general amiability are two uncommon characteristics for a Slytherin, and yet he's still weird as they come, which totally compensates for his lack of gloominess. So, the place must play some kind of role in the Slytherin's upbringing.

Leo takes him into a closet, not much bigger than a cupboard, and closes the door behind them. “You know that I have no idea of where we are and that you will have to take me back upstairs, right?” He asks, making sure Leo is aware of that.

“Don't worry,” Leo says, waving a hand dismissively. “I'll take you back to the Sun as soon as we're done here. Now, I read a book the other day—“

“Oh no, all your worst ideas start with this sentence.”

Leo ignores him. “I read a book the other day,” he starts again as he starts taking down ampules and little glass bottles from a series of shelves behind him, “and I found out something extremely interesting.”

Adam looks around, trying to make sense of the place they're in. “This is not the Room of Requirement, right?” He asks, an undertone of concern in his otherwise controlled voice.

“Of course not. That is on the seventh floor. Do you even know this school at all?”

“One can never know with you.”

Leo shakes his head as he places every single container in a neat line on the table in front of him. He's the messiest person Adam knows, except when he's doing magic. Then he needs everything to be perfectly in order. “I can do a lot, Adam, but I can't change the structure of a medieval castle, at least not yet. Now, could you please be a little more involved in this conversation and ask me what is the extremely interesting thing that I've found? It's really hard to tell you anything when I'm the only one talking.”

“You usually don't have any problem at all making speeches all by yourself. In fact, that's all you do all the time,” Adam retorts. “But anyway, what is this interesting thing you found out, which will surely cause nothing but trouble?”

Leo grins at him. “That all the spells we use are not finite, they're just standardized.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that in order to teach students a spell, it's easier to give them all the same one. A standardized version, practical, easy to remember and easy to teach. Something that could pretty much work for everybody. That is why not every student gets a spell at the first attempt. Most of them do, because they're average and the spell is calibrated on them, while it is extremely hard for those who are below average and it's even too easy for people like me who are above average.”

“Somehow I knew you would go there.”

“But even if in school everybody learns the same spell, it doesn't mean that's the only way you can perform that specific spell or that there's a finite number of spells, the ones in your school spell book, and that's it, that's all you can do. New versions of spells that already exist can be created. And you also can create new spells altogether. “

“Why would anyone want to do that?” Adam frowns. “Why create another spell if you already have one that works?”

“To be a little creative? To do better than those who came before you?” Leo uncorks one little bottle after the other and pours ingredients into a bowl. “Don't you get bored to just turn a page, read a spell and learn it by heart? Don't you need something more challenging? Because I certainly do.”

Adam would rather not answer to that. He could prompt Leo going on one of his rants about how school is killing bright magician's minds like his own. “What kind of legal book contains such a notion, anyway?”

“None of them,” Leo starts mixing all the ingredients together. “The book was in the restricted section.”  
“That's what I thought.”

“But you don't have to worry,” Leo goes on, adding water to the mix and something more syrupy, maybe honey. “Not every book in there is about the Unforgivable Curses, you know? Actually, almost none of them are. Most of them are fairly harmless.”

“Says who?” But of course Adam knows the answer. Leo always thinks to be the best judge of anything. “Why are you making a potion, now? Weren't we here so you could blast your head off with an unsanctioned spell of your own creation?”

“This is just a drink to help me focus,” he explains. “My personal recipe.”

“So you are already creating potions of your own,” Adam notices, horrified.

Leo waves his hand dismissively, downing the drink. “Potions don't count. It's like cooking. You can prepare a traditional roasted chicken with roasted potatoes or with roasted mangoes instead. It's not like you're creating a whole new kind of chicken. You're just mixing stuff.”

Adam closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath before he speaks again. He's a very patient kid, but Leo manages to always find the limits of his patience, go past them and then keep going until he can't even see them anymore. “Alright, let's just pretend you're making sense. What kind of spell do you want to do?”

“I weighed my options for several weeks but ultimately I realized that the first coolest attempt at something like this can only be a creation spell,” Leo says excitedly. “I want to create something from thin air.”

“What? Is that even possible?”

“Adam, everything is possible with magic,” Leo looks at him, disappointed. “Sometimes the fact that you're Muggle-born is really evident.”

“I'm proud of my Muggle heritage.”

“As you should, of course,” Leo pushes everything he doesn't need to the far end of the table. “Just tone it down a little bit every now and then. You don't need to be so obvious.”

“If I didn't know you better, I would say you're offending me from your high horse,” Adam snorts. 

“We're lucky that you know me so well, then.” Leo takes out his wand. It's a rune-inscribed bloodwood wand, twelve and three quarters inches long. Its core consisting of dragon heartstring and phoenix tailfeather. A bad omen, the wand maker called it. The coolest thing ever, in Leo's words. “So, shall we start?”

“This is a bad idea, a really really bad idea,” Adam complains as though this was the only way to stop him, so of course it doesn't work. “Are you sure about this?”

“As sure as I'm straight,” Leo says, pulling up the sleeves of his uniform and preparing himself to cast.

“So, not at all. Wonderful.”

“I'm at least 50% straight, so it's good.”

“No, you're 100% bi,” Adam corrects him, more than a tinge of distress in his voice now. “You're bad at math _and_ at LGBT rights.”

“Oh, come on, everything's gonna be alright.”

Obviously, nothing does. Adam should know that by now, but every time he's surprised by how quickly and how majestically things can go downhill when Leo decides to do something.

Leo is really good at magic. He always seems to understand everything on an instinctual level that has nothing to do with the way Adam or any other student at school learn their spells. Power words and wrist movements come naturally to him. Adam has never seen him try a spell more than once before mastering it, so he's not really expecting this experiment to fail.

He watches him as he moves the wand in a precise pattern that he must have studied for weeks. He knows that he should stop him because it's gonna work and they don't really want to see what's going to happen, but he says nothing and the spell goes through.

A bolt of green light and something appears that wasn't there before.

It's small and doesn't look like much – some sort of pixie or a wisp of dense white smoke – but it's there and Leo was the one who created it with one single word out of his mouth and a flick of his wand. “I made it!” Leo exclaims, performing a little silly dance on the spot. “That, my friend, was a spell that I created. And that little thing came into being because of me.”

“What is it, exactly?”

Leo shrugs. “A thing. I don't know, I didn't work out the details,” he says. He leans forward and starts poking his little creation with the tip of his finger. The creature chuckles flirtatiously. “But I will, of course. This is just the first attempt.”

“Good. Now make it disappear.”

Leo tries several times, with several different spells that are inside actual legal books, but absolutely nothing works. So, before Leo can create a spell to fix the first one and make things worse, Adam drags him – and the little creature now sitting on his head – out of the dungeons and straight to Professor Anderson's office. Leo complains a great deal and even digs his heels on the ground, but Adam is adamant.

Anderson looks up from his desk and looks Leo up and down. “What have you done this time?”

“Why does it have to be me?”

“Because it's always you, Karofsky-Hummel.” Blaine stands up and walks around his desk, coming to rest against it. “Come on, spill it out. I don't have all day.”

“I made this thing out of thin air with a spell I created myself,” Leo summarizes as he tries to calculate how many points Slytherin will lose for this. Not that he cares about the points, it's that he hates when the others get angry at him when he loses them, which happens often.

Blaine goes very very pale. “You did what?”

“It was an easy enough spell, something to try my hand at it,” Leo goes on. “It worked, but I can't seem to make this thing disappear.”

Blaine just waves his wand, quickly. “ _Nullus Factum_ , he says almost dismissively and the thing dissipates, just like that. That doesn't seem to worry him at all. “Are you sure you hadn't read the spell anywhere?”

“Yeah, I'm sure—Can you teach me that spell? It would be useful next time.”

“There's not going to be a next time,” Blaine says, pushing him onto a chair. “Adam, thank you for bringing him here. Ten points to Gryffindors. Now, you can go.”

Leo waits for the door to close, before dropping the student act. He and Blaine have been a thing for enough time now that it feels weird to even treat him like a professor. “Why are you so nervous? You fixed everything in a second, how bad could it be?”

“Bad enough that your house is losing fifty points and you're grounded,” Blaine snaps. “Now you are going to tell me exactly what process did you follow.”

“Can I at least know why?”

“Because I said so.”

And because there was only one other magician in the history of magic who was able to create his own spells, and he was not a good one.

But it's better if Leo doesn't know that for now.

Or ever.


End file.
